Hannah Gadsby already decided to slam Louis C.K. earlier this summer in a Los Angeles Times interview. Well, she’s decided to do it again, this time in an interview with IndieWire.
“Well, he can stop calling people the r-word, he can stop feeling sorry for himself,” Gadsby told IndieWire today about C.K. via phone. “There’s a clear path to redemption, he’s just not taking it. He’s being self-indulgent and he’s being a cry baby. That’s not a path to redemption, that’s just throwing a tantrum for the tantrum itself.”
“You can apply it to anyone. I just think there’s an issue at large, and it goes across all issues of representation. I think because we think about men as the default, they don’t know how to let other people talk about their experiences without centering themselves. And that runs deeper than two lonely comedians.”
Of course, if you’re up-to-date with the stand-up comedy world, and social media for that matter, you would know that Gadsby is the Aussie “comedian” whose Netflix special “Nanette,” sparked heavy debate about female and male relations in the #MeToo era. It ended with Gadsby literally dropping the mic and retiring from comedy (that clearly hasn’t happened since she now has a new Netflix special). “Nanette” started off as comedy routine but quickly evolved into a personal reflection on her life in Australia and the sexual abuse she encountered from family and friends. At some point after “Nanette,” Gadsby was all that people were talking about in comedy, sparking fervent conversation on social media.
C.K. — whose career got derailed last year after it was revealed that he was a chronic public serial masturbator -- has been trying to mount a comeback by performing stand-up at NYC's legendary Comedy Cellar club. If you remember, after being accused of masturbating in front of fellow female comedians, C.K. promised in 2017 to “step back and take a long time to listen,” but that hiatus was short-lived as he returned to stand-up comedy at the end of 2018 and made headlines with routines which openly mocked transgender people, Parkland shooting survivors, and even his own controversial actions towards women.
C.K. is touring for most of the coming year, selling out shows left and right, unscathed by the social media hounds that want him to shut up and go back to his censored dark corner.
The timing is interesting. The settlement talks will occur nearly a month after the $7 million-per-day ticking fee start tabulating, which puts real pressure on Paramount to get this done.